


To Walk These Uncharted Roads

by soulfire003



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy IX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 16:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18472621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulfire003/pseuds/soulfire003
Summary: Kuja toes the line between the warriors of Chaos and Cosmos and learns a hard lesson that betrayal will not be tolerated. But he never has been one to comply without question, and despite the rise of two new gods bent on repeating the cycle, his mind is set on what he must do. Will it lead him to redemption or ruin?Zidane's friends know him as a light in the darkness, always there to find the bright side of things and offer a helping hand. They are, after all, everything to him, almost like family. After witnessing a brutal scene that hits a little too close to home, he finds his motivations put to the test. Can he hold the group together while still wrestling with his own conflicted feelings?





	To Walk These Uncharted Roads

**Author's Note:**

> This has been an AU crashing around in my head for a few days now, and it's been so long since I've last written anything I felt a need to do a little updating. That and I really just wanted to do a little character exploration. Ratings may change as the story progresses, but I hope you enjoy my thoughts on this scene in Dissidia NT and how the aftermath could have been worked!

At first, the warriors summoned by Chaos had all approached each other with vicious suspicion at best and outright violence at worst, but in time they had learned to read each other as unwilling allies and potential opponents do. They plotted, they passed information, and some of them took pleasure at harassing the warriors on both sides of the fight, an outlet for their boredom and a means to an uncertain end. It was an unwilling truce, but a truce nonetheless, a familiarity borne of necessity over so many long cycles.

In that, although Kuja kept to himself as much as possible, Chaos’s chosen knew nothing that he did was without careful consideration, especially not in this world where Chaos had become Spiritus and their memories were intact, for once. Kefka had been right to keep his eye on their indifferent ally, but this watchfulness did not stop Kuja from slipping away now and again to where he would, dabbling in what he did.

He knew precisely what he was doing as he watched the Emperor and Sephiroth question Zidane and Terra briefly before launching into an attack. His every step was carefully planned right up until the point where it became clear the two were a little too much for his fellow Genome and the formerly enslaved warrior of Materia. With Zidane holding the Emperor’s attention, Kuja turned his coat and flew to his brother’s side first and to Terra’s next, offering them his aid and evening the playing field.

Kefka’s suspicions were confirmed in that moment. Whole in his memories, Kuja knew who he was, what he was, and what he needed to do. After the fight, the powers of Trance having seen the three of them through it, he stood unmoving until the Emperor and Sephiroth abandoned the arena. 

Return now to Spiritus’s domain would never be possible. If it hadn’t been Kuja’s own will not to go back, the look in their eyes, warriors each possessed of considerable strength and unnerving demeanor, told him he was no longer welcome in no uncertain terms. There had not been a _threat_ of vengeance in those gazes, oh no. Never mind that Zidane and Terra stood shoulder to shoulder with him, joining Kuja in his stare down, what those looks conveyed trained on him and him alone was a _guarantee_.

 _This is not over_.

If he needed any better reason to dismiss himself from Zidane and Terra’s sides then, he hadn’t been able to find one. There would be a day, sooner than later, Kuja knew, when he would receive his comeuppance for what he had done, and betrayals were not taken lightly. But as well as Kuja had come to know Spiritus’s lot, burning that bridge had cost him valuable information. The position was less than ideal, being a wanted man on one side of the fight and a target on the the other, depending on whose path he crossed in Materia's lands, but he could no longer bear those shackles. In what time he had, he would be free to plan his next move and find Zidane again once the dust had settled and things had calmed down on both sides, as much as they could.

They came for him sooner than he could have liked. Fresh out of the battle to win over Alexander, with Terra’s request still ringing in his ears, Kuja stepped through the portal and emerged on the other side, quite surprised to find what looked like the remnants of Bran Bal, shattered and ruined in the aftermath of his rage. All terrible, none of it anything he wished to see again. But what caught and held his attention was the lone figure standing atop the battered base of a collapsed tower staring directly at him. Long, silver hair waved in a breeze from nowhere. A blade longer than it had any reason to be curved from a hilt held securely in one hand. Hunger dripped from pale green eyes.

Kuja regarded the man calmly, already considering his options, running through scenarios in his mind’s eye. It was no coincidence that he had made his escape from Zidane’s company and found himself in the presence of this particular soldier, fittingly enough in the world where he had. How very poetic that this should happen in the very place he had destroyed all those months ago. “Fancy meeting you here,” he tried, testing. What would be the terms of this encounter?

To that, the man only smiled, narrowing his eyes. The response came not from Sephiroth, but from behind Kuja, in a voice that made his skin crawl, now for a whole new reason. 

“Fancy, indeed!”

Kuja looked up to darkened skies, rolling his eyes, and turned slower than he intended. The portal from the mock of Alexandria had already vanished, leaving him with a clear view of Kefka lounging on his side upon nothing several feet above the ground. It would only have been an irritant had the clown not been floating near to the Emperor, both of them watching him with a false casual interest and severe intent. Ultimecia stood farther still to the Emperor’s other side, regarding him with something almost like lust if he had been foolish enough to believe it.

Four warriors who had had grief with him in the past, two of which he had recently burned. None of them had struck him as the type to take anything personally, and that they weren't here out of some misguided idea of justice made it all the worse. No, Kuja was no fool; he knew exactly why they were here, and he knew exactly how alone he was, and he knew exactly how deep in it he was. Would he be able to escape this? No, they would surely block his every attempt.

Kefka wiggled fingers at him teasingly, that grin painted over his face more malicious than it looked at their last meeting when they stood however begrudgingly on the same side. Zorn and Thorn would have been appalled. “The Emperor tells us you’ve been doing a little friend shopping here lately. Were we not good enough for you, Kujie-coo?”

Kuja sniffed, flicking a hand in the air as if to brush the wretched pet name away. He shifted a foot to one side, using the movement to turn his hip, as if any of it could cover up what he was bracing for or what they were all about to do. Loathe as he was to suffer their farce, he wished they would get to the point. The last thing he wanted to hear was that damned man's taunts just before he stepped into his grave. “Please, spare me the theatrics. Even their presence was easier to tolerate than a moment in yours, Kefka.”

The Emperor moved next, strolling a few paces nearer with all the air of a man with all the time in the world and everything to look forward to, gaze hard and unforgiving. “You were warned about making enemies within these ranks, and I am not in the habit of repeating myself.” The staff at his side glimmered menacingly. “No second chances.”

Almost as if on cue, Ultimecia and Kefka spread out to flank the traitor in their midst. Kuja took a step back and lifted from the ground to suspend himself, gaze moving between the clown and sorceress and behind him in an attempt to keep track of his opponents, but there were too many. He could have confronted Kefka alone, perhaps with a side of Ultimecia, but not with the Emperor to back them up, and certainly not with Sephiroth to top it all off. Still, despite the cold ball that had formed in the pit of his stomach, he stood tall, returning the anticipation in their eyes with a fire in his own that radiated out from within, turning his irises red. His hair washed through the color of blood that would surely soon coat him, along with the fur sprouting over his now mostly naked form.

“I will not go down easily.” A bold declaration, one he intended to put as much truth behind as he was able, but one only he believed. As he spoke, he lifted his hands, summoning his Flare and Holy cores to his aid. No one was impressed; he had not imagined they would be.

“We don’t expect you will.” Kuja turned again to see Sephiroth making his approach, floating closer, katana still at ease at his side. The look in the man’s eyes had turned a shade sadistic. “It’ll add a bit of fun to the festivities. But in the end, you _will_ fall.”

The fight opened at last with a volley from Ultimecia’s fingertips, scorching beams of white light that crashed into the ground just under where Kuja had been hovering. He had seen her readying the blast from the edge of his vision and darted vertically just in time, returning in kind with a series of Holy cores in her direction. She dodged just as easily and closed in on his right while Sephiroth came in from his back, trying to herd him closer to the other two. Wary of another attempt, Kuja changed course and rolled himself at the swordsman to throw him off track; Sephiroth dropped back to the ground to work a different angle. Before he could double back again and send another distraction, Kuja’s legs erupted in pain from spell off the Emperor’s staff.

The blow sent him reeling, backing through the air to try and create distance, tail lashing behind him. Seeing an opening, Kefka took that time to throw a burst of something red and angry, but rather than run from the attack, Kuja slipped to the side and flung a hand out to bring an equally angry red rush of Flare in rebuttal.

Ultimecia would have none of it, and no sooner had the magic left his fingers than Kuja found himself backing again out of a joint attack from her powers and the Emperor’s that erupted where he had once been, their might such that he had to turn his face away to spare it the intensity of the heat that threatened to scorch his skin.

That had been close. Too close. And they were only getting closer.

In desperation, Kuja reared back to summon Ultima down upon them. In the moment, it wasn't lost on him how in another world, in another time, he had been under similar circumstances, fighting for his own life against an impossibility he couldn't hope to overcome. But the move was aborted with a blow from the butt of Sephiroth’s hilt to the back of his head that put alarming spots of white light in his vision. The man had taken the upper hand in a second of reprieve, all the time it took for Kuja to gather his focus and unleash the same devastation that he had rained down upon Terra again, and as close as he had been to the Genome, it was all that he needed.

Kuja let loose a cry and faltered in his hold on the air. Several feet below his original position, he caught himself and hung there, one hand to the back of his head. The fingers tangled in the long strands of his hair touched on something wet and warm as he looked around, dazed, and trying to move, go, get out.

Everything seemed to still for forever in a moment, and then his world rapidly funneled down into nothing short of pain, perpetuated by blow after blow. Seeing their advantage, pressing for the kill, the warriors of Spiritus descended upon him, relentless. At some point, he stopped recognizing whether the assaults were physical or if they were magical, if he was being hit by something from one of his former allies or if he was merely being thrown against the ground or some nameless debris of the illusion of the destroyed world around him. The sounds of explosions and impact filled his ears, sometimes loud enough that he couldn’t even hear his own screams. Something within him seemed to break several times over, in several places, and he didn't know if it was skin or bone or both.

Eventually, he stopped moving, stopped being knocked around like a leaf, powerless in the fury of a storm. He only knew for certain when he found it was only marginally easier to breathe, and the blur of light gray in front of his vision - he had stopped being able to see clearly some time ago - ceased to swirl sickeningly. He was on his back. Limbs refused to obey. Something cold and sharp pressed against the center of his chest. He didn’t know if it was piercing flesh or simply holding him down, only that it hurt. If his attackers had grown bored of him, he didn't know. If they were ready to end it all, he couldn't say.

Voices around him spoke, though he could no longer hear them well enough to understand. He thought one of them may have been a shout. Was it? The pressure on his chest was gone - when had that happened? - and, helpless, Kuja waited. Eyes closed again, unwilling to watch as his end befell him in whatever form that it would. It was here finally, the very moment he had feared ever since learning that he was not at all immortal as he had been led to believe. His soul would be lost to the darkness of eternity, in the memory of a land he himself had brought to its grave, and he would know nothing ever again. He would never read another book, never attend another play, never bring Ultima down upon another battlefield. It was over.

He had fought to the last, held his own as long as he could against overwhelming odds and been bested once more, and yet he was not proud of himself. Nothing that he had accomplished would ever amount to anything, and worse yet, this was all what he deserved. The sins of his past had been orchestrated by his own hand and none other, and what little he had managed in his short time in these awful worlds following Gaia was not enough to redeem him. It never would be enough.

His one comfort at the end of it all was that he was too exhausted and in too much agony to suffer the wresting terror he had once known at the thought that he was going to die.

Before his world went dark, an odd thought wormed its way into his head, there and then gone again too quickly for him to know if he should be relieved.

At least he wouldn’t be able to hurt Zidane any longer.


End file.
